The Castro

The Castro District, better known simply as "The Castro", is a district of San Francisco, California located in the Eureka Valley. It was named for Mexican general Jose Castro, and it was a predominantly-Irish Catholic neighborhood until the mid-1960s, having large Italian, Irish, Finnish, and other Scandinavian populations that were mostly working-class. However, the Summer of Love in 1967 led to many gays coming to San Francisco, and Harvey Milk opened a camera store there in 1973 before he became a major gay activist. The neighborhood became a center of gay culture, but the 1980s saw the police crack down on gay bathhouses due to the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the district promoted safe sex afterwards. In 2016, The Castro had a population of 12,064 people.